Ninth District holds there is no requirement for parents to be found unfit or unsuitable before appointing a guardian to a 10-year-old cancer patient whose parents took her off chemotherapy

The Ninth District Court of Appeals held that there was no requirement that the parents be unfit or unsuitable before appointing a guardian to a 10-year-old cancer patient whose parents took her off chemotherapy. The case involved an Amish family and their daughter, who had an advanced stage of Leukemia. The parents consented to their daughter receiving chemotherapy but, after seeing the treatments side effects, stopped chemotherapy and used only natural, holistic medicine. Their doctor, believing the girl would die within six months, asked the hospitals legal staff to appoint a guardian to make the girls medical decisions. The trial court denied the request. The appellate court found that the trial court had incorrectly applied a custody standard to a guardian-appointment case that should have been decided under R.C. § 2111.06. Under this statute, there are three separate, disjunctive grounds for appointment of the limited guardian over a minor: 1) the minor has no parents, 2) the minors parents are unsuitable, or 3) if the minors interest will be promoted by appointment of the guardian. The appellate court held there was no requirement to find the parents to be unfit or unsuitable before appointing a guardian under the third prong. The case was remanded to the trial court to make its determination under the statute without taking the parents suitability into account.